Friday, April 30, 2004

With the average cost for a nursing home per day reaching $188.00, there is a better way when we get old &feeble. I have already checked on reservations at the Holiday Inn for a combined long term stay discount and senior discount of $49.23 per night. That leaves $138.77 a day for:
Breakfast, lunch and dinner in any restaurant I want, or room service. Laundry, gratuities and special TV movies. And a computer hook-up free!

Plus, they provide a swimming pool, a workout room, a lounge, washer, dryer, etc. Most have free toothpaste and razors, and all have free shampoo and soap.

They treat you like a customer, not a patient.

$5 worth of tips a day will have the entire staff scrambling to help you.

There is city bus stop out front, and seniors ride free. The handicap bus will also pick you up (if you fake a decent limp).

To meet other nice people, call a church bus on Sundays.

For a change of scenery, take the airport shuttle bus and eat at one of the nice restaurants there. While you're at the airport, fly somewhere.
Otherwise the cash keeps building up.

It takes months to get into decent nursing homes. Holiday Inn will take your reservation today. And - you are not stuck in one place forever, you
can move from Inn to Inn, or even from city to city.

Want to see Hawaii? They have a Holiday Inn there too.

TV broken? Light bulbs need changing? Need a mattress replaced? No problem. They fix everything, and apologize for the inconvenience.

The Inn has a night security person and daily room service. The maid checks to see if you are ok. If not, they will call the undertaker or an
ambulance. If you fall and break a hip, Medicare will pay for the hip, and Holiday Inn will upgrade you to a suite for the rest of your life.

And no worries about visits from family. They will always be glad to find you, and probably check in for a few days mini-vacation. The grandkids can use the pool.

What more can you ask for?

So: When I reach the Golden Age

I'll face it with a grin.

Just forward all my email

to: me@HolidayInn !

Thursday, April 29, 2004

LETTER TO A MOTHER

A mother enters her daughter's bedroom and sees a letter over the bed.
With the worst premonition, she reads it, with trembling hands:

“Dear Mom, It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm telling you that I eloped with my new boyfriend. I found real passion and he is so nice, with all his piercing and tattoos and his big motorcycle. But is not only that mom, I'm pregnant and Ahmed said that we will be very happy in his trailer in the woods, with all of his family. He wants to have many more children with me and that's one of my dreams. I've learned that marihuana doesn't hurt anyone and we'll be growing it for us and his friends, who are providing us with all the cocaine and ecstasies we may want. In the meantime, we'll pray for the science to find the AIDS cure, for Ahmed to get better, he deserves it. Don't worry Mom, I'm 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Some day I'll visit for you to know your grandchildren.

Your daughter,

Judith

PS: Mom, it's not true. I'm at the neighbor's house. I just wanted to
show you that there are worse things in life than the school's report card
that's in my desk drawer...I love you!

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Indiana Weather

@ +70 degrees
Texans turn on the heat and unpack the thermal
underwear. People
in Indiana go swimming in the Rivers.

@ +60 degrees
North Carolinians try to turn on the heat.
People in Indiana plant gardens.

@ +50 degrees
Californians shiver uncontrollably.
People in Indiana sunbathe.

@ +40 degrees
Italian &English cars won't start.
People in Indiana drive with the windows down.

@ +32 degrees
Distilled water freezes.
Wabash River water gets thicker.

@ +20 degrees
Floridians down coats, thermal underwear, gloves, and
woolly hats.
People in Indiana throw on a flannel shirt.

@ +15 degrees
Philadelphia landlords finally turn up the heat.
People in Indiana have the last cookout before it
gets cold.

@ +10 degrees
People in Miami all die...
Hoosiers lick the flagpole.

@ -20 degrees
Californians fly away to Mexico.
People in Indiana get out their winter coats.

@ -40 degrees
Hollywood disintegrates.
The Girl Scouts in Indiana are selling cookies door
to door.

@ -60 degrees
Polar bears begin to evacuate the Arctic.
Indiana Boy Scouts postpone "Winter Survival" classes
until it gets cold enough.

@ -80 degrees
Mt. St. Helens freezes.
People in Indiana rent some videos.

@ -100 degrees
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
Hoosiers get frustrated because they can't thaw the
keg.

@ -297 degrees
Microbial life no longer survives in dairy products.
Cows in Indiana complain about farmers with cold hands.

@ -460 degrees
ALL atomic motion stops (absolute zero on the Kelvin
scale).
People in Indiana start saying, "Cold 'nuff for ya?"

AND

@ -500 degrees
Hell freezes over.
The Colts win the Super Bowl!
This is probably an urban legend, but it's awesome anyway. I wish it was true. It OUGHT to be true.

====================================

The following is an answering machine message for the Pacific Palisades High School in California. The school and teachers were being sued by parents who wanted their children's failing grades changed to passing grades even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their
classes.

This was voted unanimously by the office staff as the actual answering machine message for the school:

Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school.

In order to assist you in connecting the right staff member, please listen to all your options before making a selection:

To lie about why your child is absent - Press 1

To make excuses for why your child did not do his work - Press 2

To complain about what we do-Press 3

To swear at staff members - Press 4

To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you - Press
>5

If you want us to raise your child - Press 6

If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7

To request another teacher for the third time this year - Press 8

To complain about bus transportation - Press 9

To complain about school lunches - Press 0

If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable/responsible for his/her own behavior,
class work, homework, and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child(ren)'s lack of effort, hang up and have a nice day!"


The Next Survivor Show Setting

Have you heard about the next planned Survivor show? Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in a public middle school classroom for 6 weeks.

Each business person will be provided with a copy of their school district’s curriculum, and 7 classes of 36 students each, with some fluctuation as students move in and out..

Each individual class will have 6 learning-disabled children, five with A.D.D., two gifted children, two who speak limited English, and one who speaks no English at all.
Three in each class will be labeled as severe behavior problems. Two are pregnant. Twenty-one have divorced parents; of these, eleven are in the middle of custody battles. Five are on juvenile probation. Three are living in foster homes.

Each business person must complete lesson plans at least a week in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives and modifications, and organize, create, or purchase materials accordingly.

They will be required to teach, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct and record homework, grade and record exams, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, notify certain parents daily of their child’s progress, and arrange parent conferences at the convenience of the parent.

They must also supervise recess, monitor the hallways and lunchroom, sell and take tickets at athletic functions, sponsor extra-curricular activities, and chaperone dances. These activities are of course performed without payment; and the teacher is responsible for anything that goes wrong, including student misconduct at these functions. The business people must also be prepared to answer parents’ questions about their child’s school work, at these functions. .

In addition, they will complete a set number of drills for fire, tornadoes, earthquakes, intruders, and shooting attacks.

They must attend workshops (100 hours), faculty meetings, union meetings, textbook adoption meetings, IEP conferences, evaluation meetings, curriculum development meetings, and any other meeting called by a supervisor or parent. Any plans or appointments previously scheduled must be cancelled, including doctor and dentist appointments for the teacher or for his/her spouse/children.

They are required to counsel and advise parents and students over the telephone, after school hours, at their homes. Therefore they must memorize each student’s grade average and daily attitude and any problems, in preparation for those calls. An unlisted number will not help you; the parents will obtain it and they will use it.

They must provide special, free tutoring for those students who are behind, and strive to get their non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the ISTEP test. Remember, the students’ scores reflect the teachers’ skill, and the teacher will be reprimanded accordingly.

If the teacher is sick, has a sick family member, or is just having a bad day, they must not let it show. God forbid if you get pregnant.

Each day, they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, health, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment at all times. Remember, any boredom on the part of any child during the course of your class, is the teacher’s fault and may be used as an excuse for failure by the child’s parents..

Any failure on the part of a student, is the teacher’s fault.

The business people will only have access to the golf course on the weekends, but on their new salary they will not be able to afford it anyway. There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch. They won’t be leaving the building for lunch anyway, since lunch will be limited to 24 minutes daily, on the days they don’t have lunch duty. On those duty days, lunch will be eaten while supervising the lunchroom. Lunch is at ten thirty, so by two p.m. the children will be hungry again. The business people will be hungry also, but hunger isn’t measurable by any kind of state statistics so the standards must be taught regardless of the growling stomachs. It would be easy to schedule the students’ lunch at noon but that would mean paying the cooks for an extra hour.

You will get a thirty minute prep period on many days, but don’t count on getting your papers graded or xeroxed then, since this is the time many parent or principal conferences are scheduled. Substitutes are getting harder to find, so probably you will be dropped down into an absent teacher’s classroom during your prep period, unless a parent asks for you. You should plan to arrive at school before 7:30, since parents sometimes like to drop by for unannounced conferences before they go to work. Don’t count on getting home before 5:30, either, since after school is the time many more meetings are scheduled. Spur of the moment is a favorite time for parents to talk to their child’s teacher. Besides, after school is the time you will have to do your xeroxing, since your actual break is taken up with other people’s business on most days. This can be done, of course, only on those days that the copier is operable.

After you get home, the business people should not plan on watching much tv or spending a lot of quality time with spouse or children, since they will have from two to four hours of grading and preparation each night. Not to mention the phone calls from parents.

On the days when they do not have recess duty, the business people will be permitted to use the staff restroom as long as another survival candidate is supervising their class. It doesn’t matter if the teacher is sick or not. The size of your bladder makes no difference. No bathroom trips except one possibly very short trip, on those non-duty days.. The business people must never get diarrhea. It just doesn’t fit into the schedule. Teachers must also purchase kleenex, anti-bacterial hand wash, bandaids, sanitary napkins, safety pins, hair elastics, nail files, pencils, pens, and paper for the use of their students. They must also buy a thermometer, and know how to read it correctly. All of this is, of course, done with the teacher’s own money.

The business people must continually advance their education on their own time and pay for this advanced training themselves. This can be accomplished by moonlighting at a second job, which most real teachers actually do, or by marrying someone with money. The winner will be allowed to return to his or her job.

Pass this along to your friends who think teaching is easy, and also to the ones that know it is hard. They will both benefit.

Monday, April 26, 2004

I'm off to see the dentist. I know it will be awesome fun.

After all, what's a little pain to me? I teach Middle School!

Sunday, April 25, 2004

A young man dies and goes to Heaven, where he finds he is third in line at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter is taking a much-needed break, so an angel is admitting the newly arrived to Heaven.

The angel tells the three new arrivals that because so many drug dealers and other criminals have managed to sneak into Heaven that St. Peter must now be a little stricter with the screening process. Each person is required to state his former occupation and tell his or her yearly salary.

The first man in line says, "I was an actor, and I earned $1 million last year."

The angel says, "Okay, you may enter." He turns to the woman in line and asks her about her life.

She states, "I earned $150,000 as an attorney." The angel thinks for a moment and then lets her in, too.

He turns to the third one in line and asks, "What have you done with your life?"

The man replies, "I earned $8,000 last year . . ."

"Oh," the angel interrupts. "What did you teach?"

***********************************************

Now is the part on Scheiss Weekly where we all clap our hands, and laugh.

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

No Child Left Behind, My Aunt Fanny
The following is a little something I wrote while enduring yet another mind-boggling-ignorant seminar/lecture about Bushie's 'No Child Left Behind' idea. (yet another piece of shit that looks good on paper but in reality simply will not work. . . .)

Ahem.

"Responding to demands from organized groups of concerned and dissatisfied parents, the State has hired an official Photographer. This official Photographer's goal is to ensure parents that all children will be attractive and well-groomed when exhibited publically in the yearbook and at the mall.
'No Child Looks Like A Behind,' the agency and motto set up by the State, will be implemented this year, and by spring 2004, 93% of all students enrolled in Indiana schools will be evaluated. Any child found to be stlil below established standards, ie 'ugly,' will be referred to the district's Reconstruction Committee, which will identify specific problems, and recommend procedures and practices which can sculpt the child acording to his/her individual needs.

Next year, the State will begin to implement the somewhat controversial "No Child Acts Like A Behind" program. Details will follow shortly."
When someone is hit hard enough on the nose, it bleeds so hard and so fast it nearly drowns them when they lean their head back. And then when they straighten back up, blood and phlegm go shooting out of their head like bullets from a gun. And their eyes turn red. And they choke on the big chunks. And they eventually try to hit back but they keep slipping on the vomit and eventually have to stop trying just to keep from falling down in it. And it all produces a lovely smell, not unlike that package of chicken that got left in the trunk of the car that hot summer day.

Just a little something I learned today during the students' lunch period.

Doritos, anyone?

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

I think sometimes that school should just surrender to the inevitable, and close out in April. It's not like the students are getting anything done after that anyway.

And then I think, nah.

And then I want pizza, and I eat some, and I forget what I was thinking in the first place. Oh well.

And then I remember. . . . No Child Left Behind.

And then I laugh hysterically.